In a Thursday item on NBC News's web site, Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, and Andrew Rafferty asserted that "just like the issue of gay marriage, the Pope and the Catholic Church have gone from being wedge issues that benefitted the GOP in 2004 to ones that now favor Democrats." The three journalists cited Associated Press's reporting on Pope Francis's new encyclical on the environment, and concluded that "what this news does is guarantee that climate change is a conversation in GOP presidential debates, especially since several of the candidates...are Catholic."
Birth Control
By Matthew Balan | June 15, 2015 | 1:13 PM EDT
In a Friday column, the Washington Post's Dana Milbank again misquoted a conservative, where he attacked pro-lifers for not being "on the right side of logic" for opposing abortion, but not supporting "contraceptives [which] would seriously reduce abortions." Milbank cited Americans United for Life's Charmaine Yoest, who supposedly stated, "'I haven't seen anything' to convince her that more contraceptive use reduces abortions. She [Yoest] pointed to Guttmacher's 2011 findings that between 2001 and 2008, a reduction in the proportion of pregnancies ending in abortion 'could represent increased difficulty in accessing abortion services.'"
By Geoffrey Dickens | May 27, 2015 | 10:49 AM EDT
Social conservative-haters in the liberal media are sharpening their knives today as Rick Santorum is set to announce his 2016 presidential ambitions. From his arrival to the Senate in 1995 through his 2012 presidential run the media have attacked the former Pennsylvania Republican Senator as a “terrifying” “theocrat” who wants to impose a “Christian version of Sharia law.”
By Matthew Balan | May 21, 2015 | 6:39 PM EDT
Patricia Miller ecstatically touted that the apparent "demographic free-fall" of the Catholic Church is "good news for the country" in a Thursday item for Salon. Miller bemoaned the American Catholic bishops' "outsize role in U.S. politics" in the past, given their opposition to abortion, contraception, and same-sex "marriage," and asserted that "with their flock fleeing and Pope Francis espousing a more conciliatory form of Catholicism less focused on the pelvic zone, the U.S. bishops don't look so powerful."
By Matthew Balan | April 16, 2015 | 6:25 PM EDT
Laurie Goodstein spotlighted that "the Vatican abruptly ended its takeover of the main leadership group of American nuns" in a Thursday article for the New York Times. Goodstein played up that the final report of the supposed "takeover" was a "far cry from three years ago, when the Vatican's doctrinal office...issued a report finding that the [nuns] had 'serious doctrinal problems.' It said the sisters were questioning church doctrine on homosexuality and the male-only priesthood, and promoting 'radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.'"
By Jeffrey Meyer | April 2, 2015 | 8:15 AM EDT
Appearing on MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell on Wednesday night, Nina Burleigh of Newsweek crudely joked that Republicans who defended Pence and Indiana’s Religious Freedom Act were experiencing “premature intolerance ejaculation.”
AP Tersely, Inadequately Covers Notre Dame's Supreme Court 'Touchdown' Over HHS Contraception Mandate
By Tom Blumer | March 11, 2015 | 11:11 AM EDT The University of Notre Dame won an important victory at the Supreme Court Monday morning when the Court acted in its case involving Obamacare's contraception mandate. Its "GVR" order (grant, vacate, remand) granted Notre Dame a "writ of certorari," vacated a lower court ruling against the school which would have forced it comply or face severe penalties, and remanded the case back to that lower court for reconsideration in light of the higher court's Hobby Lobby ruling last year.
In response, the Associated Press issued a terse, unbylined four-paragraph "We have to cover it, but we'll be damned if we attach any importance to it" report later that morning. After the jump, I'll compare AP's output to a far more accurate and thorough writeup by NewsBusters alum Matt Hadro at Catholic News Agency which recognized the potentially far-reaching implications of the court's move.
By Tim Graham | February 20, 2015 | 11:04 PM EST
People magazine featured HBO star Lena Dunham in its half-page feature “Why I Care: Personal Stories About Giving Back.” The headline in the March 2 issue was “The Girls creator, 28, supports access to birth control and reproductive rights.”
Dunham, naturally is “giving back” to the abortion industry. A photo caption read “Dunham, who hosted a Planned Parenthood event in January, says she feels ‘compelled’ to help.” At the bottom of the article, People helpfully instructs: “For more information, go to plannedparenthood.org”. The article was basically an advertisement
By Matt Philbin | December 22, 2014 | 12:06 PM EST
ThinkProgress details the many ways The Knights of Columbus act their faith. They oppose same-sex marriage, pornography, abortion, and the contraceptive mandate. Is this shocking?
By Tim Graham | November 30, 2014 | 9:56 PM EST
Melinda Gates is the ideal philanthropist in the eyes of the liberals at Time magazine – after all, she and her husband Bill Gates became Time’s Persons of the Year...about the same time they gave Time money for a health summit. Anyhow, Melinda was recently honored with the “Ten Questions” interview with Belinda Luscombe in Time’s December 1 and 8 issue.
They promoted “The philanthropist on the importance of contraceptives, her daughters and her growing optimism.” Mrs. Gates lied to (or at best, misled) Time about her foundation's support for abortion advocates
By Matthew Balan | November 19, 2014 | 7:22 PM EST
The Daily Beast's Jay Michaelson warned his left-wing fellow-travelers in a Tuesday item that Pope Francis "does not intend to change fundamental Catholic doctrine" on human sexuality. His evidence: the Bishop of Rome spoke at a "bizarre" (in his words) conference where "a who's who of theological conservatives from a breadth of Western religious traditions" gathered to discuss traditional marriage.
By Matthew Balan | November 17, 2014 | 6:42 PM EST
On Sunday's 60 Minutes, CBS's Norah O'Donnell hounded Cardinal O'Malley on the Catholic Church's teaching on priestly ordination, and wondered, "Does the exclusion of women seem at all immoral?" She also hyped that "some women feel like they're second-class Catholics." The journalist also underlined that the "conservative" Boston archbishop is a "hardliner on Catholic doctrine. Like Pope Francis, he upholds traditional positions on abortion, gay marriage, birth control, and women's ordination."